Light entities in Worldcraft are used to give a realistic illumination to your level.  In this short tutorial, you will learn to create a simple room and light entity that will demonstrate a normal white light.

*NOTE: this tutorial assumes you at least know how to make walls and a simple square room.

To begin, load up a new map in Worldcraft. Once the window pops up, create a room that is 480W x 480L x 128H in any way you like (I prefer building each individual wall myself to keep it on the grid lines). Pick some nice textures for the walls, ceiling, and floor and apply them as you see fit. Make sure that the walls and ceiling are 32 units thick. This will come in handy later.

In order to make a light, I recommend you first make a light fixture which will add a bit of realism to your level.  If you don't have light fixtures for the lights in your map (unless it is an environmental light), it will look quite strange.  To add our fixture, select a light texture you would like to use.   For this tutorial, we will be using +0~light2a.  Once you have the texture selected, look at the size next to its picture.  It says 64 x 32, which means this is the size of the box you should build to get the correct texture alignment.  To do so, click on the block tool  and build a box that is 64 x 32 in the top (xy) view.   Now make the box 16 units thick and move it to the middle of the left side of the room.  Move the fixture into the ceiling so that it goes in half-way.  Press enter to create your light fixture.  Now, with the selection tool, click the light fixture and go to tools->carve.  Worldcraft should now carve your ceiling around the light box and make four separate shapes, as shown below:

Now for the actual light.  Click the entity creation tool  and select "light" from the drop down list.  Place the light under the center of our light fixture and exactly 16 units below it.  You will have to set the grid to snap on 16 in order to center the light under the fixture properly.  Press enter to create your new light in the map.  When it is created, click the selection tool and select the box representing your light entity.  Right click to bring up an options list and select properties way down at the bottom.

**NOTE** When creating lights, you ALWAYS have to bring up the properties menu due to a bug in Worldcraft.  If you don't, your lights will not show up in your map after you compile.

In the properties menu, you should see these options, if not, you did something wrong... go back and correct yourself now.

In this window you have several options.  Here is what they do:

Target: This triggers an action when the light is activated.  I personally will probably never use this, but I guess it could be helpful.

Name: If you want the light to be activated by a switch, your light entity must have a name.

Brightness: Controls the color and brightness of your light.  The first three sets of numbers represent the color of the light, the last dictates the brightness (each can be a value between 0-255).  If you select 'pick color', you can easily change the color of the light given off and the correct values will be entered for you.

Appearance: Strobes, flickers, that sort of stuff.

Now click the 'Flags' tab and you'll see the 'initially dark' box.  This is good for when you want to trigger the light with a switch. For this tutorial, you won't be using the initially dark flag, so DON'T TOUCH!! Exit the properties menu by clicking the 'X' box in the upper-right corner. If you wish, you may compile and run your map now, but we aren't done.

Click the block tool and create a wall that runs through the center of your room starting from the right wall to the middle of the room. Make it 32 units thick, 128 tall, and have it run 240 units across the X-axis (left to right in top view). This will create some shadows to demonstrate how brushes can affect the lights in the game.

Well, there you have it! Compile and run your map.

You now have my permission to make lights on your own, but do it carefully.  Bad lighting can destroy a perfect map, and great lighting can improve a bad map (it improves it, not perfects it).  Good luck.

Example Map